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Sunday, July 02, 2006

My how time flies....

It all started when I talked about a typical Saturday for us... and now today the blog is one year old! Yes, we still even have chicken salads on Saturday nights! We have since tried and posted over 400 new recipes that we made! Whew! I was looking back and was surprised that we have only had a couple flops, but that was mainly due to our taste buds and not so much the recipes. I did not think a year ago that we would be here still talking about our ever evolving palate and our fun adventures in the kitchen. I started the blog as we were beginning to branch out from a set rotation of recipes and we were wanting to try new foods... our family and friends couldn't believe we were eating more than chicken fingers and fries! We have done a couple face lifts to the blog, but I think we are pretty happy with the layout now - it's not perfect.... but it works for us! I hope that we are able to give some inspiration to play around with some new recipes we share and to have some fun in the kitchen!

Well, this was also our last weekend in Phoenix! We are flying back to Maryland for the last time at the end of this coming week - it went by so fast! I'm not sure how long it will take us to get settled in, but it should be an interesting experience - we don't close on the new house until the 13th. We will be living out of a hotel until then... oh boy!

Expect a fair amount of chicken recipes this week as we try to get the rest of it used up from the freezer. We did make 11 new recipes this week - it was hard to pick out favorites, but I think the Easy Fruit Ice Cream, Fish Tacos with Broccoli Slaw and Breakfast Fig and Nut Cookies were excellent. As we did our final round of grocery shopping today, we did pick up a couple of new items we saw. The first is one we will be using in a recipe this week - I snuck a taste and man... it is spicy!

I drink a lot of water each day (250-300 ounces) and while I try to get Jeff to have it plain, he prefers to drink it flavored either by having it as Iced Tea or crystal light. We saw these at the market today and the first thing I noticed was that it is sweetened with Stevia!

While I don't have anything against Splenda or other sweeteners, it is nice to see companies starting to use alternatives. We tried it and were both pleasantly surprised! I don't enjoy the taste of tea much, but this is sweet with a strong berry-like flavor. While it does not taste like fresh berries, I didn't notice any aftertaste and it was a nice change from plain ol' water. They come in these fun single use packets to add with about 16 ounces of water - it will definitely come in handy at the hotel at least!

The packers will be here Thursday and they will be loading the moving truck on Friday... I'm going to try and sneak in as much baking and cooking as I can before that - but we are pretty busy trying to get things separated and ready.

PS - If you were at Costco today and happened to loose your Platinum Wells Fargo Debit Card, we found it and called the bank to let them know we had it. They placed a hold on your account in case someone copied down the number and was going to use it maliciously. Hopefully we stopped someone from doing that, but I don't know how long it was lost!

How considerate and thoughtful to call the bank about finding the card. I am sure the cardholder will be very grateful. Not everyone is that honest. You have my admiration, not only for writing such a lovely food blog, but for being such a good citizen!Ciao,Christine

Happy One year Bloggiversary (hehe). I love the variety of recipes you've made, and I enjoy not only the pictures you share, but your "reviews" of each recipe. I've learned many good tips here, Joe. Thanks for sharing your experience with the rest of us!